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Enlightenment Through Understanding

The Meritocracy

August 6, 2014

The left is asking, “When is the next crisis? Is it Russia?” How about never? There won’t be a return of subprime or the mortgage meltdown. Nor will there be a tech bubble, or any sort of problem. Jut buy the dips and make easy $. That permanently high plateau Irving Fisher spoke about is happening today, and it won’t end badly.

This economy is sorta crazy right now. It’s sort of BS that the govt. says that the unemployment rate is going down because, look, James Altucher is on the board of director of a billion dollar temp staff agency and so what he is seeing – and you’ll see this if you dig deep in the govt. numbers – is that part-time employment is shooting strait up, so that’s why the unemployment doesn’t seem to be moving much is because everyone is getting fired and then re-hired as part-time employees, and he (James Altucher) sees this six months ahead of the govt., so people are scared, and what they want to do is blame the fed, blame the rich, blame the meritocracy, blame the elite, blame web 2.0 and the government, because any sort of change brings fear, pain, class warfare and finger pointing.

Regarding the meritocracy, the left is split into one of two camps: those who deny the meritocracy exists and those who are opposed to it. Both are wrong. The meritocracy does exist, and that’s good.

As evidenced by the overnight successes of Facebook, Uber, Snapchat and other web 2.0 companies, the good news is that even with record high wealth inequality, the meritocracy is still alive and well for the cognitive elite, at least. Same for Ivy League schools. By in large, even with allegations of affirmative action, they still admit the best and brightest; few dull students there, versus the private colleges that admit dull students by the millions and kneecap them with sky-high tuition and room & board in exchange for a degree seldom worth the paper it’s printed on. And if that isn’t bad enough, half of them don’t graduate, so the money is completely wasted (‘Some college’ provides ZERO income benefit over only having a HS degree). Same for getting a job at high paying companies like Facebook and Google. No nepotism or cronyism there. Much less mobility for those who aren’t in the cognitive elite however. This trend will continue with no end in sight. Neoliberalism and it’s close ties to neoconservatism, pragmatism, and utilitarianism has won – especially after the failure of the Obama administration to live up to its promises to provide lifelines to delinquent home owners, reform student loans , close Guantanamo, or make health care affordable.

Going to Harvard or any prestigious university is the best shot at being successful at life if your parents aren’t already rich and influential. Doesn’t mean that all Harvard grads are successful or that grads from no-name colleges are domed to failure, it’s just that there is a higher correlation with attending a prestigious university and being super-successful than going to a no-name college. Look at all the founders and venture capitalists of web 2.0 companies and most, with few exceptions, are in the top 1% of intelligence and were admitted into prestigious schools. It’s irrelevant that some dropped out or the degree was not applicable to creating an app, being admitted meant they were already in the intellectual elite – a factor which significantly increases the odds of success outside of school, too, due to skills transference.